Archive of Our Own

“You have been betrothed to her from the moment you were born, Prince Dimitri.”

Dimitri would have smiled, then, accepting his duty like the obedient heir to the throne he was. If he remembered correctly, he did smile. He had straightened his back and bent low at the waist, acknowledging his father’s words for what they were at the mere age of seven years old.

“You see, she is from a minor, yet powerful noble house,” his father had continued with that gentle look in his eyes that said he was proud of his son’s acceptance and yet concerned in his own way. “The Eisner House is an ancient household that has dwindled to only two members over time. But they have the respect of Faerghus and the backing of the Church. Her father has served the crown for many years, and his father’s father before him.”

Whatever was decided for him, Dimitri accepted. He had to.

The day he breathed his first breath, it was decided he’d be the Crown Prince, too. His schedule was decided, his duties, what he should learn, and even the person he would wed.

Just like all other aspects of his life, even that day nearly five years ago, it was decided that he would go to Duscur with his father.

It was never decided that he would watch his father die.

Afterward, he tried to continue to accept everything because he wanted things to remain the same: that his uncle would be regent, that Cornelia would advise him, that he’d attend the Officers Academy as planned…

There, he even met Byleth Eiser, his classmate to whom he was promised.

But by then the cracks in his life had started to form, to grow, to change.

He met her on the battlefield surrounded by bandits, there only because of some haphazard trip into the village with Claude and Edelgard (his stepsister, whom he wanted to cherish, but why had she forgotten him?), and Byleth was a whirlwind of steel and ice when she arrived to save them.

And yet, when her father had patted her on the back while wearing his armor polished by the Church of Seiros itself, part of him seethed.

“I’m proud of you, kiddo,” Jeralt Eisner had said. “If you hadn’t seen those suspicious tracks…”

Byleth, her violet eyes near expressionless, nodded her head. “I wanted to come.”

This girl had chosen her own path.

And that angered him.

It was irrational, he knew. Petty. Childish, even. Yet the feeling coiled in his chest all the same, sharp and unwelcome. She had chosen. While he—

He accepted and accepted until the word “acceptance” itself lost meaning, until it became something hollow, something with a bitter taste. Acceptance was not peace. It was not contentment. It was simply the absence of resistance.

Byleth Eisner did not lack resistance.

And Dimitri was tired of accepting his fate, for accepting his fate had only brought him death and destruction. For what had accepting things as they were gotten him?

So, he watched, silently pitying himself because he had not known there was another option in this life. He saw her in classes, standing apart from the others at the Academy in a way that made it seem as though she existed on a different plane entirely. Students laughed, argued, and formed bonds that burned bright and loud. Meanwhile, she stayed silent. She spoke when spoken to in a soft, tenuous voice.

Few understood her.

At first, Dimitri told himself that he did not care to.

It was easier that way.

Time, however, was relentless. He should have known it would work against him.

Despite himself, he began to notice small things.

The way her gaze lingered thoughtfully, as though weighing something unseen. The way she spoke sparingly yet never wasted a word. The way she fought with precise, unshakable intent. She always won her battles and training spats with the fewest strikes. It was efficient.

On the day at the beginning of autumn in Horsebow Moon, Byleth offered him chamomile tea after supper, he did not know what to make of the request. Sylvain had certainly encouraged a tryst—whatever this was.

Instead, he stared at her small hands as she placed the porcelain cup on the saucer before him, the twilight pinks radiating from the sky kissing her skin. A sweet, floral scent wafted from the spout of the teapot, enduring.

“You haven’t slept well,” Byleth explained in a matter-of-fact way. “There are bags under your eyes.”

“I do not know what you are speaking of,” Dimitri replied.

Byleth merely tilted her head, observing him for a long moment. “If you believe in a better future, it’s easier to face the past first.”

He hadn’t realized that it was the anniversary of the Tragedy of Duscur until then.

Perhaps it was that day that Dimitri began his affection for her.

He should have known. But oftentimes he was a foolish man.

He should have recognized the shift in his chest, the way his thoughts circled back to her, the way her presence steadied something deep within him.

It was the simplest things that made him weak.

The darkness caved in with every passing moment as the months stretched on, and though she was there by his side, a constant presence that ebbed on want and selfish desire, he had already decided that he would be the one to right the wrongs of the past.

He knew without a doubt that acceptance was not the answer. So, he copied what the girl did. He had to admit her usefulness. He walked a new, different path, one he had chosen for himself.

It was the first path he had chosen, you see. Truly chosen. A path of reckless vengeance allowed no room for her. He didn’t choose her, after all. Byleth was chosen for him.

Dimitri was very good at ignoring things he did not wish to face.

First, he reminded himself of his father, beheaded before him, of Glenn, who was burned into an unrecognizable corpse. They needed justice. They needed him.

He chose to become a monster the moment Edelgard revealed herself as the Flame Emperor, the one who worked with those who orchestrated the Tragedy all those years ago.

He roared against accepting his fate until he stood there now at the base of a shattered cliff, his hands raw and bleeding from searching for the girl whom he was supposed to marry.

His breath hitched.

His fingers dug into the dirt, into stone, into anything that might give him purchase, might give him hope.

“Byleth!” Her name tore from his throat, ragged and desperate, nothing like the composed prince he had once been.

Far, far too late.

He hadn’t chosen this part.

-

Who knew how many winters had passed?

It began as a pressure beneath his ribs, faint and easy to dismiss. A heaviness, like breath caught halfway between inhale and exhale. Every winter, the pressure grew. He paused, hand braced against a wall or a tree, and waited for it to pass.

There were always aches. Always wounds. A body like his, dragged through mud and wreckage and fury, would never be whole again. Pain was expected. Pain was familiar. He relished in the pain he deserved—a constant flagellation, ghosts chittering displeasure in his ears.

Why haven’t you done it yet?

Have you killed that woman?

Why do you still think of her?

By the third winter, the cough came. Dry, at first. Irritating. The kind that clawed at the throat and left nothing behind but strangled breath. He blamed the cold. The damp. The long nights spent without proper shelter.

Yet you have no one to blame but yourself.

A sickness had lain in his chest for so long that he had nearly forgotten when it had started. The invisible thing had grown, spread, taken root in the first days after he had been broken out of Fhirdiad’s dungeons by the rebels and Dedue—Don’t think of him, you wretched fool, you damned demon, for you murdered him too. Whatever Cornelia had done to him had damaged his body, damaged his soul.

But no matter.

At least now, his eye no longer throbbed in festering discomfort. Now, he wore a stolen eyepatch from an Empire soldier and covered the scarred monstrosity. A gift from that wretched woman, Cornelia. He could still taste the iron on his lips, could smell the metallic scent of lifeblood that coated his teeth from the man he had killed to retrieve it.

By the fourth winter, the gnawing that sat planted in the cavity of his ribs worsened.

The coughs grew sharper, deeper, dragging something up from his lungs each time. His chest burned constantly now, a dull, persistent ache that flared into agony without warning.

Still, he fought.

He killed.

He endured.

Because what else was there?

Nothing but a means to an end.

He was awash with the gore of the filthy rats he had done away with, the traces of their innards soaking the ends of his hair, blood freezing on the bend of his neck with the frigid winds that blew in from the north. He cut his way through a war-torn village on the border of Fearghus and the Empire.

Dimitri was about to step out of the shadows and into the streets, seeking the shelter of a dilapidated home that was half burned away, when he heard a voice.

“Consumption,” one of the Kingdom soldiers muttered once, eyeing an operational field clinic and its long line. “I’ve seen it before, years ago when we annexed Duscur.”

Dimitri stifled a cough, and his fists clenched so tightly that if he weren’t wearing gloves, he was sure his fingernails would have bit into his palms and made them bleed.

“Consumption?” asked another rather diminutive soldier.

“That’s right. The White Death. It spreads without warning, without discrimination. Sometimes the healthiest are struck with illness, and then within months, they are husks of themselves, white as snow, and at the Goddess’s doorstep, coughing blood.

“They say consumption makes you glow bright, makes you dearer, more beautiful. I suppose it could be true…when one is about to meet the Goddess.”

Dimitri backed away. He’d find shelter elsewhere, where it was less noisy with nonsense.

But the words lingered.

The White Death.

An old sickness he had heard of, too, one that had taken his birth mother. One that wasted the body slowly, mercilessly. One that turned breath into knives and life into a folly that would soon dissipate with patience.

Fitting.

If any illness were to take him, it would be something like that.

Something that bided its time, something cruel.

By the fifth winter, as the snow drifts piled at the base of Garreg Mach, consumption had become a part of the very bones in his body. Whether he trembled with fever or not did not matter, only that he still persisted in the name of the woman’s head he wanted to hold in his hands, to raise high on a spike and—

It felt as though something coiled around his lungs, tightening, tightening, until even the smallest breath became a battle. He clawed at his chest, at his throat, as though he could tear it out, rip free whatever had taken root within him.

And sometimes—

Sometimes, between coughs, between the sharp bursts of pain—

He could see her.

Not truly.

Just a memory that flickered in the far reaches of his darkness, a light that would surely guide him to doom.

Violet eyes that shifted into light green, and hair that matched. Goddess-touched, and yet her father died. Blessed by the saints, and yet she was lost to the depths below, the river rapids rushing her remains away with naught a proper funeral in sight.

In every vision, she was still and quiet. Watching him in that way that made it seem as though she saw everything he tried to hide.

Byleth.

The name alone made his chest seize.

The coughing began again. Worse than before. It was always strongest when he thought of her.

He thought of her as he ripped his lance through the bodies of the vermin that crawled through the stairwell of the Goddess Tower, as he shredded their throats and tore their limbs. Red splattered walls painted bright and pure. A crushed hand here, a severed leg there—what did it matter anymore?

There was beauty in tearing everything apart.

Because he chose this.

He chose this.

You did, and it is brilliant. It is the choice of a king, a king!

You choose for the vengeance you must take!

Remember us, Dimitri!

“Illness is illness. Nothing more,” he muttered, coughing afterward. Blood coated his tongue. “It cannot take me unless I am weak.”

He stabbed through the stomach of the final man at the top of the steps. The bandit stumbled, a look of shock on his pallid face, the color immediately draining from his lips, and he tilted to the side. Thunk, and he was a carcass now, too.

“Useless,” growled Dimitri.

He sank against the wall on the far end.

Why did you come here? He wasn’t sure if it was Glenn or his father who whispered the question in his ear. Perhaps it was Dedue, perhaps it was her.

Five winters, and damn it all, it was—

“The man at the river told me it was the Millennium Festival,” a voice broke through the thick silence. “But that would mean it has been…”

You have spoken your thoughts out loud, fool!

“Five years,” Dimitri spat. “And yet you bequeath your shadow unto me still.”

He glanced up, the figure of Byleth standing over him, an unmistakable silhouette blocking the ray of light that beamed through the window.

“Pathetic,” he added, glancing away. “Leave me, you vile wraith.”

The shadow exhaled, its breaths trembling.

“I’m not a wraith, Dimitri,” the thing said.

And then it reached its hand out—What a joke—until the fingers brushed against his cheek.

He startled, pushed away.

Its skin felt so real, so warm.

“It cannot be,” he rasped, eyes widening.

Byleth crouched before him, her hand cupping his face, her thumb caressing the crease beneath his covered eye. “I am real,” she said. Her eyes softened. “What happened to you?”

Cease this nonsense! This is a demon, a monster, a homunculus born out of hell! Cornelia sent this creature after you to torment you!

He slapped her arm away.

He could not breathe.

The cough tore through him anyway, more unforgiving than the last time. His hand pressed against his mouth, trying to muffle the sound, trying to contain whatever threatened to spill out. He curled further into himself, the force of it stealing the air from his lungs. Something rose—thick, suffocating—and he spat it out onto the frozen ground.

Blood and small, familiar, white petals stained at the edges. Perhaps a trick of the light. It had to be.

Because if this was not a trick, this was not the White Death, after all, but something else entirely.

Byleth gasped. “Chamomile flowers?” Her hands reached for him once more.

He batted her away.

Then he laughed. A hoarse, broken sound that scraped against his throat.

“Of course,” he rasped.

Of course, he would be tormented by something so absurd. Something grotesque. Hallucinations, surely. The mind breaking down, piece by piece. He had never been whole to begin with. Why should it not finally betray him entirely?

He crushed the petals beneath his gauntlet.

They were real.